Uncorked Ventures Blog

First a Happy Monday. Hope everybody's having a nice start to their week.

A couple of things, first, if you're in the midwest or on the east coast and you have a current wine club membership with us, or you received a wine club gift, it's likely that you're going to receive some wine in the next 24 to 48 hours, if you haven't already this morning with Fedex. The simple reason behind that is the weather has sucked. We've been trying to time shipments to get everything there so it doesn't sit in a warehouse in say New Jersey or New York where it could be exceedingly cold over the weekend. We try to time it so it stops somewhere that's a little more palatable. Hopefully, we've done that pretty well. If you're a wine club member, shipment should be there shortly.

Second of all, over the past week you'll see, or the next coming week at least, you'll see a couple of things from me on the written side of our Uncorked Ventures blog. That'll be largely about a couple of tasting events that I had on Friday. First, I got a chance to go to a Premiere Event for Atlas Peak Vineyards. Not the Valley Premiere, the wider wine auction that has been in the news the last couple of days, was two days ago on Saturday. They raised what is an ongoing record. It seems every year the amount of money raised for charity goes up. In this case they raised 6.1 million dollars. Last year it was 5.9. The year before that, if you remember when they first started to ramp up the program, was about 3 million. You're seeing a pretty quick ascension into a wider amount of money raised for charity.

Napa Valley Premiere is interesting because it's largely focused on both retail and wholesalers. The idea is as a wine club I could go and bid on some of these small lots of Cabernet. It's not largely happening. I could bid on some Cabernet. Then in turn resell that at a profit to my wine club customers. That's not something that we currently do. Although you've seen some astronomical prices paid. Last year there was in the Erickson lot of 260 basically Screaming Eagle bottles that sold for, I forget, $250,000 or something for a wine import house in Los Angeles. You can see all that stuff. It's kind of fun. It's a fun time in Napa. You have all these small scale private events. It's not a great time to visit. We saw some folks yesterday who were just trying to go and to view wines cellars in Yountville and found the place closed. Although much to the folks from Dos Lagos' credit, they found a glass for them and were able to turn what was going to be. These guy from Denver were going to go home and say Napa was difficult because we couldn't get anywhere, to wow that was really a lot of fun and the folks from Atlas Peak are really nice. I think that's something you see in the wine industry a lot. That's one of the reasons why I like the industry myself. Premiere happened. It's interesting because it's both a charity but a business event as well.

Thirdly, I had the chance to sit down with Matt Reid who makes the wine at PWR which is the People's Wine Revolution. I'm going to have a write up about that. I got a chance to actually sit and taste with Matt in his backyard. Met his dog who was a fun guest at the tasting, as well as taste through six of his wines. He does an amazing job given the price point of under $20. You can bet better than even money that People's Wine Revolution will show up in our Explorations Wine Club here in the coming months. Once again Mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures, Wine Club [inaudible 00:03:40], coming your way in a couple of fun tasting events on our site that we'll write up a little bit more later. Hope everybody's off to a good week. Thanks again.

Members of our monthly wine club are receiving (at least some of you) this Amity Vineyards Pinot Noir, Winemakers Reserve 2008 in wine club shipments this month. Here's why:

Hi guys, Mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures.

I wanted to do a quick video intro here on Monday morning about an Amity Vineyards Pinot Noir that we're shipping this month. We don't often get an opportunity to ship aged wines that come directly from the winery. I know there's a few folks out there that do it, but, in essence, I was told during my first meeting after starting Uncorked Ventures by Jean Hoefliger at Alpha Omega winery in Napa that 98% of wine is consumed within 48 hours of its purchase and I think from our conversations with wine club members and, frankly, with friends family and, quite honestly, with our own house as well, that seems to ring true.

Every once in a while, we ask, "Hey, do you guys have anything from an older vintage that's available?" and sometimes we'll taste through it and say, "You know, this is not holding up that well," or whatever the situation is... Amity vineyards was recently sold to Union Wine Company. Union Wine Company actually came from a box wine background and Amity is a high end producer in Oregon that's focused on their own single vineyard stuff, so we're shipping their wine makers reserve, they call it. In essence, they pick the vineyards, they go through, they find the best barrels and they throw them into a reserve program. Retail on this? 45-50 dollars.

Our special selection wine club members will get it and the reserve selection level, which is our premium wine club, you'll get it too. We were really excited about this because it's a 2008. We know we're well into 2015 at this point. You're starting to see '11 and '12 Pinot hit the market, hit your local wine store. Its aged 6 or 7 years beyond what you would typically see and its starting to get to the point where your average wine store is going to say "We don't really know what to do with that." Well, our customers do and we wanted to do an '08 for a simple reason: its been called the quote-unquote vintage of the century; it's been called outstanding; Wine Spectator gave it an "A" on the "A" to "F" scale. The '08 and the wine valley is... if you want to taste the best of Oregon, 2008 was a great year to do it. We often talk about how in great vintages you get great wine from everybody and then in bad vintages you get great wine from only the best and the brightest. I think this is a great example of the best and the brightest produce really great wine in all vintages, but really memorable stuff in great vintages, and I think that's what we have here from Amity Vineyards. You pour this in your glass ... the thing is, like I said, from '08 so its 7 years aged at this point ... there's still really bright fruit. I think it can easily go another 5 or 10 years after this. It just speaks completely of sour cherry and some of those classic Oregon Pinot notes that you'll notice with blackberry and cassis and some of those flavor profiles that fit along the wine, but the acidity is really the memorable thing here. Oregon often talks about how if you drink one of their Pinots, you want to have a piece of grilled salmon next to it, and that's really what comes through with this wine. We hope you enjoy it. I'm sure you will. It's quite honestly one of my favorite wines that we've shipped in the last few months in our wine clubs, so I think it's pretty simple. Enjoy.

A brief intro to Ponzi Vineyards and their Oregon, Willamette Riesling.

Hi guys! Mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures.

If you're looking for January wine club shipments, you might have noticed the national news for the East Coast and the Midwest has involved stuff like, "Frozen Disaster," or "Frost-quake in Kansas City," so shipments have been going out the last couple of days and you'll continue to see them go out over the next few days, into early next week, depending on where you live.

January shipments are coming, February weather looks a little bit nicer, so that will go out a couple weeks after, and we'll get everybody all caught up. I'm sorry about the delay, but like we tell people if they call or ask us via email, sending out wine popsicles doesn't do anybody a whole lot of good. In any case, part of our regular wine club shipments this month, includes a Ponzi Riesling from the Willamette Valley in Oregon.

Ponzi is kind of a known quantity, a known name if you are an Oregon wine fan, and while we might never ship a no-name from California, because we find it not very interesting, distribution for Oregon wines is still quite lacking in the wider marketplace. Even here in San Francisco, there's really only one or two folks who do Oregon, or do it very well. Most of the folks that we work with up in the Pacific Northwest would struggle to find a distributor or even a broker that would willing to represent them, both in terms of the amount of wines they make, which is usually quite small, then also there's a whole level of critical acceptance or consumer knowledge about Oregon wines that's just a little bit lacking.

We still feel comfortable serving Ponzi once in a while, depending on the vintage and the varietal because sometimes I think it still deserves some attention. The basic story is this: In the 1960's, a Ponzi family, husband and wife, moved to Oregon to make Pinot, they were influenced heavily by Burgundy, they wanted to find a cool-climate growing region. At that point, the Anderson Valley had not even been really discovered in California as far as a wine-growing region, so if you wanted to find true burgundy, you had to go further North. They staked out about 20 acres or so Southwest of Portland, and away they went. And Ponzi's kind of one of those great Oregon wine stories at this point, they've made a name for themselves with the brand, the family name, as well as Oregon Pinot in itself. So, we didn't ship a Ponzi Riesling because, you know, Oregon Pinot, we're finding small producers and club members seem to be liking that.

This is a Riesling. When you talk to folks in the Pacific Northwest, or even in California, they're kind of at a loss for what that secondary grape is going to be. I'm not sure Oregon's been able to come to a conclusion about what's their white wine grape going to be. You hear Pinot blanc from some people, you hear that they still think they're going to be able to pull off Chardonnay, but it's going to be a ... less fruit-driven and more acidic version of the grape than what's been popular in California. Riesling's popular even among Napa wine makers who think that maybe as Chardonnay has gone out, there's that whole "Anything but Chardonnay" movement, Sauvignon blanc has come in to take its place, in large part.

A lot of wine makers still feel like Riesling is maybe the correct answer. I think that you're starting to see more and more wine regions, if not singular wine makers or groups of wine makers, who think Riesling is a really great choice for their vineyard. If it's a warmer climate, like Napa, they feel like Riesling does really well. Oregon might be most traditional as far as ... you think of Riesling, you think of the Mosel Valley in Germany. It's one of my favorite parts of the wine industry. In Germany, when they harvest, we think of cellar rats or harvest hands. In California, it's either being, folks that are getting paid an hourly wage or, in the wine industry mostly, the cellar rat folks are, and that's a term of affection, more so than not, so let's be clear about that, are people who are still in college, or just out of college, and looking for their first job within the industry, and, just frankly trying to take it all in and learn a little something, to get their first regular paid gig. In Germany that's not the situation at all, employment ... being different in Europe kind of leads to some different things going on. Most of the harvest hands in Germany are actually retired folks. The Moselle Valley is kind of a really steep valley, and the river's at the bottom, as you might expect, and they carry the grapes on their backs, in backpacks, and they have these big slate rocks, and one of the only reasons why the Mosel Valley can exist at all as far as grape-growing is these big slate rocks take in the sun, and really keep the vineyard a little bit warmer at night than they would be otherwise. You'll often see these folks in their 60's and 70's trying to push these rocks back up into the vineyard as they are starting to fall down, because they need every little bit of ripeness they can get.

That's pretty similar to what happens in Oregon, and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to feature this Riesling. I also wanted to feature it personally because we've reviewed some Rieslings from New York State, and some from other folks, and they do a really nice job with this sweetness scale on the back, where, because a Riesling can go from not sweet at all to pretty sweet, like dessert wine style, and the New York folks will tell you exactly where it is. This Ponzi bottle doesn't do that at all, and one of the reasons why they don't do that is simply because it's not sweet, and they don't plan it to ever be sweet. It's a dry version of Riesling, it's a more mineral-driven than it is a sweetness-driven. I hope if you're not familiar with Ponzi, you'll take some time to have a look. When they have movies and stuff filmed in Oregon, typically at the premiere it's Ponzi that's poured. It's a well-known name, it's a really great wine-making story, and frankly I think they deserve all the credit in the world. They're on of the ones who have really driven the market to be accepting of Oregon wine, and I think that they deserve our attention still to this day. Once again, Mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures. We've been called one of the best wine clubs to join by Forbes magazine, and I think this is one of the reasons why. From big producers to small producers, as long as there's really high quality wine you can find stuff like this Riesling that's made in under 1,000 case increments that's really interesting and it's not at your local wine store, and that's one of the things that we really enjoy doing. So, once again, thanks for the time and for considering joining our wine club and we'll see you again soon. Thanks.

Champagne vs Sparkling Wine. Why there is a difference between the two, even if the French and American governments can't exactly agree what the difference should be.

Hi guys. Mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures.

Couple of things today. I want to spend a couple minutes talking about the difference between champagne and basic sparkling wine. In essence, there's kind of one thing that happens here.

In California, there's been a large kind of ... not a fight, but an argument over can California vintners use the word champagne on their label. One of the examples that we have here is Korbel. Korbel's maybe the best-known kind of American producer of what is champagne or sparkling wine. In essence, they're the same thing.

Champagne is supposed to be made only in the Champagne region of France, but the French don't do us any favors here in using a, basically varietal name for something that they make with the growing region, making them one and the same. Yeah, from a marketing perspective in the 1800s, this probably made a lot of sense, but these days, it probably makes less sense. Just like although if there is a town in France called Napa, we wouldn't want Napa Cabernet Sauvignon or we wouldn't want a vintner in Sonoma using the Napa label. Just like, when I went to the Fancy Food Show, I wasn't thrilled to see a chocolate vendor from New Jersey using the Napa Chocolate Factory label. At the same time, there's got to be some influence of ... Dom Perignon basically invented this way to make wine, and there's got to be some way for people to be able to differentiate what's a sparkling wine in a champagne style, versus what's just a sparkler. Korbel uses the... Which is, at least in America what we're allowed to do is put California champagne.

It is what it is. I have 3 wines with me, none of which are technically champagne, all of which would love to call themselves champagne, and they're all not allowed to call themselves champagne for different reasons. First Korbel. Korbel is kind of a classic name in American wine. There's two brothers that came to, in essence, what is Sonoma in the late 1800s. They started producing champagne. Then they survived prohibition and everything that's come after. This is probably still served ... it came up I think in Obama's first inauguration, they served a California champagne, and the French government kinda threw a hissy about it. I think things have settled down enough for everybody to cool our heads for real. I think everyone realizes that if you want a champagne from France, buy champagne from France. If you want an American sparkling wine, calling it champagne is not going to kind convolute it enough for anybody to really be confused. [Inaudible 00:02:25] we've talked a little bit about in this space before. I think it's one of the truly up and coming names in California Wine.

They're from down in Monterey. The thing that people don't realize about the champagne region of France is it's pretty damn cold. I think that's why the kind of wine got made the way that it did. In essence, what happens with champagne when they're producing it is that when you have a normal fermentation ... and we have some pictures of this up on our site ... is that CO2 is produced. It goes up in to the sky. It goes away. Done, goodbye, thanks for coming. If it's cold enough, fermentation can stop midway, and the CO2 is trapped. One of the things that they figured out in the champagne region of France is that they were just cold enough that they weren't being able to finish fermentation before the cold really set in after harvest, so they were allowing fermentation to finish in the bottle. If you think about it, if you put everything into a bottle of wine and put the cork on, where's the CO2 go? It's trapped within the wine itself, and so then the only way for it to escape is in bubbles once you open the thing. That's how you end up with a sparkler. Jacques Pelvas, this is another French guy. They're from the Languedoc. I've talked about the Languedoc a little bit in this space before. The French, just like champagne, burgundy, Bordeaux, there's a lot of rules that go int o what can be grown, what can be made, how do you label your wine. They're certainly the most restrictive country in the world when it comes to wine labels and how to create them and even what you're allowed to plant in your vineyard. The one region in France that is truly open for anything, which reminds us a little bit of California, is the Languedoc. The Languedoc has done a little bit of everything. They'll remind you of the [Rhone Valley 00:04:09] in parts where they're Syrah and Grenache and doing a pretty good job of it. They'll remind you a teeny-tiny bit of Bordeaux in parts where they've growing [cab 00:04:17], and this is kind of a grower cooperative champagne from ... no, not a champagne. See? Now I've got myself doing it. From the Languedoc too. Three wines, none of which can actually be champagne but all of which are champagne, at least production-wise. I hope that over the long-term that they can come to some conclusion. I think putting an American champagne on the label is frankly ... it's fine. I think there's bigger things for everyone to worry about within the wine industry than simply how to label something, especially when you have two different countries and two different laws and much different laws going into it. BTW, I think there's a quick answer here, I talk about this stuff and pay attention to it because as a wine of the month club, I think it can be important to follow trends and fads within the wider wine industry.

The French definitely do a larger amount of rules and regulations than do American wine companies and American wine kind of oversight. I think there's going to be naturally some butting of head there. I think there's probably more than there should be right now. Once again, Mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures. I hope you've enjoyed this short talk of what is champagne versus sparkling wine, and wine in California is technically all sparkling wine, but some folks if you had your label before 2006 are still allowed to use champagne on your label one way or another. Champagne versus sparkling wine.

A short intro to GSM (Grenache-Syrah-Mourvedre) blends in California. Why they're more important than you probably think:

Hi guys. Mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures.

First, happy Monday. Secondly, I hope everybody on the East Coast, especially in New York City, is going to survive what everyone seems to be calling The Storm of the Century.

Wine club shipments have been delayed a couple days. They're going to go out in the next day or two, especially if you're on the East Coast. I didn't want the wine sitting somewhere in the Midwest or on the East Coast where it was going to show up to you like a wine Popsicle, so we avoided that. The wine will go out today or tomorrow.

In any case I did want to take a couple minutes then to talk about something that I see happening more and more within the wine industry. When you look at kind of traditional France, Bordeaux and Burgundy you see single varietal wines, or at least in parts of Bordeaux it's like that. Burgundy, especially with Pinot Noir, it's like that. Napa has kind of made a name for itself with both kind of single vineyard or single source Chardonnay, as well as Cabernet Sauvignon. But there's this whole wider wine industry that's starting to turn more toward blends and there's a couple reasons for that. First, if you don't own your own vineyard you're constantly sourcing stuff from multiple vineyards. It's a heck of a lot easier to have more of a consistent style if you're sourcing from multiple vineyards and blending it together yourself as opposed to sourcing a single vineyard and saying, you know, we've got this great example of a cool climate Russian River Valley Saralee's Vineyard Grenache, only to see Saralee's Vineyard then sell the Grenache to a larger winery after you've done it for a few years and you're basically stuck at zero. We saw that happen to a few folks that we know pretty well.

In any case one of the natural offshoots, if you can't own a vineyard in Napa or Sonoma and you are left a little bit more on the periphery of the wine industry, you may find yourself growing Rhone varietals. As we've talked about numerous times, in this space at least, Syrah is a difficult sell in California and elsewhere, so you're probably looking at a GSM blend as a way to present your label, your style, and get the wine out there without having to fight the whole consumer sentiment that "I don't like Syrah." Here's a couple great examples. First [inaudible 00:02:07] this is a GSM blend from down in Paso Robles. According to the bottom of the bottle 48% Grenache, 29% Syrah, 2% Mourvedre. The Mourvedre, if you're familiar, it's traditionally a blending grape in the Rhone. It's used the same way here in California. In essence the wine maker puts that in for only one purpose so it is a little chalky and it's thick and syrupy, but more than anything else the biggest thing about Mourvedre is that it's dark purple in color. It's one of the darkest, non-black skin grapes that you're going to find. That's why they use it, because it darkens everything up a little bit. Fore Family Vineyards, it's another good example of the GSM. I don't think they even have the percentages here listed, which is something that frankly I don't mind. If you're saying it's a GSM then it just kind of is what it is, whatever the percentage is. It can change from year to year. Fore Family is based up in Lake County. It's kind of one of the preeminent growers up there in Lake County. I think they're, kind of, other than an estate wine program that's starting to take steps forward that kind of commensurate with the quality of wines that are being produced by others with their fruit. I think that's what you're starting to see. If you're a wine region on the periphery of what thought of as the classic wine regions in California and also in France, [inaudible 00:03:29] France in Languedoc where they've kind of adopted GSM blends as one of the things that they do, and they do quite well. You're going to see that continuing more and more. I would be frankly quite surprised if there wasn't another ... there's this whole other 46 movement and that's the wine producing states in the United States that in essence are not California, Oregon, Washington, the three we cover, and not New York because you have New York City and you don't have to try very hard. I'd be surprised if one or two of those didn't focus on Syrah or at least on GSM to try to see what they could get in the market place with it. These are kind of bold, intense wines and that's something that people are gravitating toward. If you look at the success of Cabernet in the market place you can see why somebody would think well if Cabernet does so well and Syrah does so poorly, maybe we can blend to something and get it closer to Cabernet, even if I don't have grapes from a Cabernet vineyard that would lead itself to $125 wine.

In any case, Mark Aselstine, Uncorked Ventures. I hope everybody is staying warm. I almost hesitate to admit that we're sitting at close to 70 degrees here in the Bay Area and everybody is feeling quite good about that.